Washington ? FBI agents illegally videotaped suspects, intercepted e-mails without court permission and recorded the wrong phone conversations during sensitive terrorism and espionage investigations, according to an internal memorandum detailing serious lapses inside the FBI more than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The blunders roughly 15 over the first three months of 2000 were never made public but garnered the attention of the “highest levels of management” inside FBI, said the memo written by senior bureau lawyers and obtained by The Associated Press.

Lawmakers reviewing FBI missteps preceding the terror attacks expressed surprise Wednesday at the extent of errors detailed in the memo, which focused on sensitive cases requiring warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The mistakes extend beyond those criticized in a rare public decision this summer by the secretive U.S. court that oversees the surveillance warrants. That court admonished the FBI for providing inaccurate information in warrant applications.

The April 2000 memo marked “immediate” and classified as “secret” describes different problems from those cited by the court. It describes agents conducting unauthorized searches, writing warrants with wrong addresses and allowing “overruns” of electronic surveillance operations beyond their legal deadline.

“The level of incompetence here is egregious,” said Rep. William D. Delahunt, D-Mass., a member of the House Judiciary Committee who obtained the memo from the FBI and provided it to AP.

Said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.: “Honest mistakes happen in law enforcement, but the extent, variety and seriousness of the violations recounted in this FBI memo show again that the secret FISA process breeds sloppiness unless there’s adequate oversight.”

The FBI’s deputy general counsel, whose office approves requests for national security warrants, acknowledged Wednesday the mistakes led to broad concern inside his agency long before Congress began investigating whether the bureau missed signs of Sept. 11.

“There’s always going to be mistakes,” said M.E. “Spike” Bowman. “We looked at those incidents very, very hard. We found no common thread. A lot of it was inattention to detail.”

These warrants are among the most powerful tools in the U.S. antiterrorism arsenal, permitting secret searches and wiretaps for up to one year without ever notifying the target of the investigation.

The court approved 1,012 such warrants in 2000.

Lawmakers approved changes last year under the USA Patriot Act giving new powers to use these special terrorism and espionage warrants. But some lawmakers have since complained they were not adequately informed of problems under the old rules.

“As the Justice Department pushes the Congress for more powers, we should first be sure that these problems are being corrected and that existing laws are being used responsibly,” Leahy said.